Magnetic properties of confined bosonic vacuum at finite temperature

Abstract

We compute the combined effect of confinement, an external magnetic field and temperature on the vacuum of the charged scalar field using Schwinger's formula for the effective action in the imaginary time formalism. The final result reproduces an effective Lagrangian similar to the Heisenberg-Euler one in the limit of no confinement, in the case of confinement it provides the necessary corrections to this Lagrangian at each order of magnitude of the magnetic field. The results show a finite temperature contribution to the vacum permeability constant apart from the one due to confinement alone.